


Lenguas Extrañas

by Wildehack (tyleet)



Series: punchworld [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, The Punchlines
Genre: Dwarves, Gen, M/M, Original Characters - Freeform, Tieflings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: “You are Casimir of St. Andrea,” Aurelio said carefully. “You are a Tiefling.”“I am half-human,” Casimir said, burning with disappointment. “The council ruled two years ago that I have a soul. Tieflings do not have souls.”





	Lenguas Extrañas

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I wrote fic for my character's backstory. It isn't the first time, and it won't be the last. 
> 
> Things to know: 
> 
> The Universal Faith is a religious empire not at all unlike the Renaissance Catholic church. The big difference: a woman called Elís is their messiah, and the church does not differentiate between genders. There are male and female priests; nuns are not a thing. Celibacy is still a thing for priests, tho. 
> 
> Tieflings in our homebrewed world biologically require the flesh of sapient beings to live, because demons are assholes. The Universal Faith does not consider them people--they are demons without souls. 
> 
> Casimir is half-human, half-Tiefling, orphaned as a baby, raised by monks. He's now a teenager who wants to be a priest. He gets his daily dose of human flesh by attending thrice daily mass, via the power of literal magical transubstantiation (this is my bread you eat, this is my body you drink.) 
> 
> If you want the Name of the Rose meets Buffy meets D&D, this is the thing for you. 
> 
> ONE MORE DISCLAIMER: my Spanish is worse than Casimir's Dwarvish, so apologies in advance if the translations I assembled are terrible.

The dwarves came to St. Andrea the fall before Casimir turned sixteen, forty-odd strangely accented foreigners invading the rectory, the refectory, the library, and the grounds. All the novitiates were all expected to double up; a spare cot had been crammed into Casimir’s cell, which made quarters so tight that he could barely squeeze out from between the two beds. They were a visiting party from the Basilica of La Médula de Diosa in Santa Dulcinea, there ostensibly to help Brother Luciano with his research into the immaculate resurrection of Saint Claudia. To that end, they came bearing the holiest relic of La Médula de Dios: Claudia’s mummified tongue, a loan that could not be accomplished without twoscore of La Médula de Diosa’s most devoted to accompany it and ensure its safe return.   
  
“That’s not the real reason, though,” the dwarf taking up the cot in Casimir’s room told him the first night of La Médula de Diosa’s party’s stay. He spoke Common with a lilting, musical accent, and fast enough that the phrases sped into each other, no pause between the beginning or ending of any word, although occasionally he would linger in the middle of one. He was already of interest to Casimir simply for being a dwarf and a foreigner--the monastery was almost entirely human, with the exception of Sister Emilia, Brother Carlo, Pietro who always insisted his mother had a drop of elvish blood despite no visible evidence that it was so, and Casimir. The fact that Casimir found himself intrigued by the sound of the Gatolunyan accent was just icing.   
  
“What is the real reason?” Casimir asked, turning over in his own cot to look at the dwarf. The lights had been doused half an hour earlier, but there was some light still streaming in from the window. The dwarf grinned at him, and the expression suddenly made it clear that he was Casimir’s own age, or near to it, although he was only the size of a ten year old child, and a short black beard already decorated his chin.

“The real reason is that Cardinal Perez is backing the liberal faction against la Madre,” the dwarf said knowingly. “And the Holy Mother objects, so she’s demanding Bishop de Sepulveda’s presence in Rema.” Bishop de Sepulveda was the head of the Médula de Diosa delegation, and was currently resting her sanctified head on the abbot’s pillows, his rooms having been sacrificed for the duration of their stay. She was also, it was widely known, one of Perez’s bastards, and distantly related to the Gatolunyan queen.   
  
“You think de Sepulveda is a hostage?” Casimir asked slowly.   
  
The dwarf laughed. “She would be a hostage in the capital,” he said. “Good thing we’re not in the capital.”

Casimir had wondered why their abbey--formerly most famous for their vineyards, currently infamous for boasting the only Tiefling convert in the empire--was chosen for such an honor. He frowned slightly. “You shouldn’t tell me such things,” he said after a moment. “I could be a papal spy.”  
  
“I’m only telling you what is common knowledge in Santa Dulcinea,” the dwarf said, rolling his eyes. “And probably here, too. Don’t your people tell the novitiates anything?”

The other novitiates, maybe. No one liked to tell Casimir much.

“We’re only two hours from the city,” Casimir said instead.“We get messengers all the time.”  But the two hours had to be undertaken on foot--horses couldn’t manage the steep paths up the mountain. There was an inn at the bottom, where visitors stabled their horses and carriages, for a fee--and pages with wheelbarrows and palanquins willing to cart belongings and the infirm up the mountain on their backs, for a larger fee. “I don’t suppose the bishop would twist her ankle if a summons came from the city?” he asked.

“And then receive a penance which meant the injury would have to heal naturally,” the dwarf confirmed cheerily.

“And if La Mama’s messenger brought her a palanquin?” Casimir asked, already guessing at the answer.

Another flash of teeth in the dark. “I shouldn’t say the next part in Common.”

“Will you say it in Dwarvish?” Casimir asked.   
  
“Do you speak Dwarvish?” The dwarf sounded amused.

“No.”   
  
“Then I don’t see how it will help you, Casimir.”

“You know my name,” Casimir said, unsurprised. Everyone knew his name, who came to St. Andrea. He was nearly as famous as St. Claudia’s mummified tongue. “But I do not know yours.”

“Aurelio,” the dwarf said, after a slight pause.

“I’d like to learn from you, Aurelio,” Casimir told him, and the words came out a little more harshly than he meant them. He meant Dwarvish, but he also wanted to learn what was common knowledge in Santa Dulcinea, and he wanted to learn how Aurelio thought, what perfectly ordinary things had been kept from Casimir, because no one from St. Andrea wanted to tell the Tiefling anything. “If you are willing to teach me.”

Aurelio was silent a while, and then he said: “Nunca creí los rumores. Por supuesto que tiene la menta de un hombre. Le enseñaré si aprenderá. Entiende algo?”  
  
Something about rumors, a mind, and understanding. There were plenty of cognates between the two languages, and enough was written about the different Dwarvish regions in the histories that the place names at least were familiar, although Aurelio still spoke too quickly for Casimir to catch most of it. Casimir stayed silent.  
  
“Did you understand any of that?” Aurelio repeated himself.     
  
“No,” Casimir said.  
  
Aurelio smiled. “Palanquínes son inestables, muchacho. Muchos portadores se caen de la montaña cada año, con sus cargas. La obispa nunca pondría un pie en uno. Si La Madre insiste, es posible que un palanquín se caiga de la montaña otra vez, y la obispa todavía no vendría a Rema.”

Palanquins, mountain, year, bishop, the Father, Rema. “Which part of that was hello?” Casimir asked.  

*  
  
Aurelio was a good teacher. He had friends among the Dwarvish novitiates, but he willingly spent most of his time with Casimir, despite the coldness this won him from the rest of St. Andrea. If Aurelio had any doubts as to the source of the rumors about the empire’s only Tiefling convert, Casimir was sure they were put to rest within a week.   
  
Casimir, it was whispered, had the mind of a beast and not a man, and had to be trained and whipped into his duties the way one might break a dog into submission, a lash in one hand and the body of Elís in the other. It was also whispered that Casimir had the mind of a devil, and could persuade anyone into an unholy action, if they were foolish enough to let their guards down. Casimir was supposed to savage the sheep in the dead of night, and creep down to the vineyards and drip the blood of infants into the barrels of wine, and it was good luck to have Casimir hold the holy cup and cloth at christenings, but bad luck for Casimir to lift the holy book into the father’s hands at funerals. When cows died in the village, it was Casimir’s fault. When the harvest was good, Casimir was paraded as a symbol of the unending power of Elís, who triumphed even over hell, whose victory in Casimir was made flesh.

Aurelio was not troubled by any of the stories. He surrounded Casimir with novices of La Médula de Diosa in the refectory, and prodded him into using his rudimentary Dwarvish, until Casimir could join in with the mockery he began to realize the dwarves showered on his peers, who they regarded as backwater idiots.   
  
“Que uno es tan endogámica que es increíble que puede encadenar dos pensamientos juntos,” Aurelio might say, casting a disdainful look at Bianchi the younger.   
  
“No es de extrañar que persigue ovejas en lugar de chicas,” Vanesa might reply slyly, looking at Bianchi herself, so no one could mistake who they were speaking about. Vanesa was considered a beauty, with a long gold braid as thick as sailing rope hanging down her back, and violets decorating her short golden beard. Casimir was certain Bianchi had noticed. “Es verdad, Casimir, no?”   
  
“Soló las ovejas lentas,” Casimir would answer slowly, to shrieks of laughter, Bianchi turning a dull red and casting Casimir a look of utter hatred, despite having no idea what the words meant. It would be very bad, Casimir knew, once the dwarves went back to Santa Dulcinea.   
  
But then Aurelio would nudge his arm companionably with his shoulder, and teach him something new--how Moira was worshipped in the lowlands of Spanalfheim, in isolated forest shrines, how the old queen Caterina had been a tyrant who had probably fucked her own son, how to say _table_ , how to say _cup_ , how to call Aurelio _tú_ instead of _usted_ \--and Casimir would let himself forget how bad it would be.

*   
  
Three weeks into the Médula de Diosa party’s stay, and Aurelio grabbed Casimir’s hand at the wrist during mass, with enough strength that Casimir’s palm opened, and Aurelio could see the opened up scabs on his fingers, from dipping them in holy water to paint the sign of the cross on his brow.   
  
Bishop de Sepulveda took her place next to the abbot, and the congregation stood. Casimir used the movement to pull his hand away.   
  
“The Lady be with you,” Bishop de Sepulveda began, and the room spoke back to her: “And also with you.”   
  
Almost the entire room spoke back to her. At Casimir’s side, Aurelio murmured something under his breath instead, and immediately Casimir’s hand and brow began itching with healing magic, the cuts closing up as if they’d never been.   
  
Casimir jerked his head away from the altar, and turned to Aurelio.   
  
Aurelio looked steadily back at him. Casimir looked away first.   
  
Bishop de Sepulveda had seen them, had heard the break Aurelio made in their harmony. Casimir waited outside the chapel for her to render punishment after the mass was ended, but de Sepulveda barely gave him a glance. She paused by Aurelio instead, and Aurelio didn’t even have the grace to look penitent. She sighed, and kept walking.

“Ella le gustas,” Aurelio assured him.   
  
After that, someone healed Casimir during every mass. Sometimes Aurelio, sometimes Vanesa, sometimes César.   
  
Casimir tried telling them it was a waste of their energy--he would injure himself the same way a few hours later, and his hands were always scabbed over from handling his rosary. Aurelio agreed that it was an absurd waste of their time and energy, and then continued healing him. Vanesa just rolled her eyes, and César gave Casimir a long and very rapid lecture he only partially understood in Dwarvish about Elísian views on suffering, and Casimir had to actually clap a hand over César’s mouth to stop him, lest anyone from St. Andrea hear him talking about Elísian precepts.   
  
“Acéptelo,” Aurelio told him eventually. “Nos gustas.”   
  
*   
  
It was easier to accept than it should have been. The weeks slipped on, and became months.   
  
Casimir woke from a nightmare once, and instead of reaching for the crucifix he kept wrapped in a cloth under his pillow, and the reassuring pain that would let him know he was really awake, he spoke Aurelio’s name.   
  
“Que pasó?” Aurelio mumbled, only a few feet away, and Casimir let out a shaky breath.   
  
“It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”   
  
“Mm,” Aurelio said, already mostly asleep again.   
  
Casimir looked at Aurelio and waited for his heartbeat to steady itself, breathing in and out. After a while he realized uneasily that he didn’t know how long he had been looking at Aurelio.   
  
He turned to face the wall, resolute, and instead of thinking about the things from his nightmare, he thought about the dark sweep of Aurelio’s lashes against his cheek, the coal-black of Aurelio’s hair, and how it had fallen away to bare the vulnerable spot where his ear met his neck, how it must be very soft to touch.   
  
In the vineyards the next day, César told them about the Izyntine interpretation of the priest’s holy marriage to Elís, and how they believed it was not a betrayal of the Goddess to marry one’s fellow priest.   
  
Casimir threw a grape at César’s head and told him not to talk about Izyntine precepts where anyone could hear him.   
  
“Incluso cuando es razonable?” Aurelio asked, while Vanesa giggled.   
  
“Yes,” Casimir said, firmly ignoring the lurching feeling in his belly, and threw a grape at him, too. “Especially then. Doesn’t the bishop care that you all listen to Elísian absurdities?”   
  
“No cuando es Aurelio,” Vanesa muttered. Aurelio threw a grape at her.   
  
*   
  
“Do you miss Santa Dulcinea?” Casimir asked once, when they were falling asleep.   
  
“Claro,” Aurelio said. “ Es el lugar más hermoso del mundo.”   
  
“Tell me about it,” Casimir murmured.   
  
He fell asleep listening to Aurelio tell him about the caves that opened up to the sea, the underground streets full of light and air. There were vast plazas decorated in mosaics designed to look differently when the tide rushed in to dance over the tiles, there were deep wells of ocean water in public squares where colonies of oysters were carefully cultivated, there were gardens of coral, there were skylights in the stone that let in clear rays of sunlight from fathoms above. Cardinal Perez’s palace was built from warm yellow rock, and inlaid with coral and mother of pearl in the inner chambers, which were designed so cleverly that the singing of the choir could be heard in every room, but no other sounds carried.   
  
“I would like to see it someday,” Casimir said, mostly asleep.   
  
“Someday you will,” Aurelio answered him, unless that was already part of a dream.

*

“Ella era muy hipocrita,” Aurelio murmured, peering over Casimir’s shoulder at the manuscript he had been slowly and painfully illuminating for the past three hours. It was a page describing the miracles of Saint Isabel d’Aragona, with her bloody trident, one graceful white foot planted on the belly of a red devil, howling his defeat. She was most famous for her triumph over the demons, cleansing Aragona so completely that the only dangers lonely woodcutters and farmers need fear were wolves.  

“Era un gran santo,” Casimir replied softly, casting a wary look at Father Luce, who was peeling tangerines at the front of the room, clearly bored with his task of overseeing the novitiate work. That did not mean he would be lax with punishment, should someone catch his attention, however. And of course Casimir would be the first to receive any punishment, regardless of the true culprits. “Una persona muy importante para la conquista espiritual d’Aragona.”  
  
“Hipocrita,” Aurelio insisted. He was almost done with his own page, despite the ridiculously outsized quill Luce had given him. “Hay historias entre los Elísianos de Aragón que dicen que un Tiefling era su amante.”   
  
The tip of Casimir’s quill broke, splashing red ink on the page. Luce looked up, scowling, and Casimir busied himself with replacing it, bowing his head as Luce gave him a familiar lecture on wasting St. Andrea’s resources, and insisted that Casimir start again, despite Aurelio’s protest that the spatter of red paint could be the Tiefling’s blood being cast into the air.

When the work resumed, Aurelio leaned over to Casimir again, despite Casimir’s narrow focus on his page. “Quieres saber más? Su amante la traicionó, así que ella tuvo toda su familia ejecutada. Incluso los niños, y inocentes. Ella era el verdadero monstruo.”

“Don’t _lie to me_ ,” Casimir said, and the words shook on the way out, loud enough that Luce came back down on them, and Casimir was obliged to finish his pages in a different section of the library, with worse light, and seek a personal penance from Luce after he was done.

As usual for Luce, the penance was to forgo evening communion, followed by several hours scrubbing out the latrines.   
  
When Casimir came back, long after the last evening bell, he hoped Aurelio would be asleep--but of course he wasn’t. Aurelio sat up in bed as soon as Casimir opened the door.

“You missed supper,” Aurelio said. “And you didn’t take communion.”

Casimir shrugged, and started changing for bed. The crucifix stung his fingers as he pulled it off his neck--something he was usually careful to hide from Aurelio. The lights had been doused hours ago, so he didn’t have to see Aurelio’s expression. “It happens.”   
  
“Did I offend you, my friend?” Aurelio asked, exactly as Casimir had hoped he wouldn’t. He sounded hesitant, which made it worse. “Perhaps it is painful to hear about murdered Tieflings.”

“That is _not why I am offended_ ,” Casimir snapped. He was down to his shift, now, and his face and hands were clean; that was well enough for tonight. He got into bed, and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders.  
  
“Elís concédeme la luz,” Aurelio said abruptly, and touched his own crucifix. The room was suddenly full of a sweet, radiant light, sure to call _someone’s_ attention--and then Aurelio slipped the crucifix under his shift, and the light faded into a kind of underwater twilight. Aurelio looked at Casimir seriously. “I want to know how I have angered you,” he said.   
  
Casimir briefly considered ignoring him and turning to face the wall--but Elís had granted Aurelio the light. He sat up, grudgingly, and hugged his knees to his chest. “I am….grateful to you,” he said, feeling like he had to pull each individual word from his throat with fishing line and a hook, “for showing me friendship, despite my parentage. But I am not a monster. I do not-- _pity_ \--monsters. You insult me by pretending to do the same. Especially for my sake.” 

Aurelio stared at him. “But you are Casimir of St. Andrea,” he said carefully. “You are a Tiefling.”   
  
“I am half human,” Casimir said, burning with shame and disappointment. He had thought Aurelio understood him, all these months. “The council ruled two years ago that I have a soul. Tieflings do not have souls.”

Aurelio shook his head. “I beg your forgiveness, but holy water scalds you, and crosses burn you, and you need the body of our Lady to survive. You are my friend,” Aurelio stressed this by trying to grab Casimir’s hand, but Casimir yanked it out of his reach. Aurelio faltered slightly, but kept going. “But you are also a Tiefling. You are more than either of those things; you will be a priest of the Moiran order next year. Casimir, you are proof that the light of Elís can reach anyone, regardless of race.”

Casimir shook his head, so unhappy he felt physically sick with it, his face feverishly hot, icy dread in his gut. “You’re wrong, Aurelio.”   
  
“I’m not!” Aurelio said, and he looked so fervent in that underwater light, almost like a painting of a saint himself. “If you are a Tiefling, and you are worthy of Elís, and you commit no evil, if you are good and kind and my friend, then you herald a new mission for the Church.”   
  
“This is blasphemy,” Casimir snapped. His heart was beating so fast it frightened him.   
  
“A mission to the Tieflings,” Aurelio continued, as though he hadn’t heard. “Although it need not stop with them! We could bring Christ’s peace to every country in the world! We should send missions to the Dragonborn, to the sea folk, to the goblins and kobolds--!”   
  
Casimir threw his pillow at Aurelio’s head, stopping him in his tracks. “You are _wrong,_ ” Casimir snarled.

Aurelio’s jaw was still stubbornly set. “How am I wrong?” he asked. “Tell me, tell me how I am wrong.”

“ _Because no one would choose this,_ ” Casimir burst out, and the truth of it abruptly terrified him.   
  
Aurelio looked shocked. “What?”   
  
“Even if it were possible,” Casimir whispered. His throat hurt, although he hadn’t shouted. “Even if every Tiefling in the world could. None of them would.” He could tell, distantly, that his hands were shaking slightly. He’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even his confessor. Not even Cardinal Valentín. “I am hungry all the time. I ache, I hurt, and I have wanted to do terrible things to make it stop. I dream sometimes that I can--slake my hunger--and I do horrific things. I can’t tell you about those things, but they-- _feel_ \--good. I wake and I am sick with myself, and _I am still hungry_ .”   
  
Aurelio looked almost as sick as Casimir felt. He opened his mouth to speak, but Casimir shook his head sharply, blinking back tears viciously. He wasn’t done.   
  
“I am-- _always_ \--fighting myself. And I love Elís. But I owe her my entire existence. And my monster’s blood is cut by half. How much sharper would a true monster’s hunger be? I swear to you, Aurelio. If you took a full-blood monster, and raised it as I have been raised, it would kill or it would die before it was weaned.”

Aurelio’s hand had crept to the crucifix at his breast, damping the light even further. He looked frightened at last. It registered as a dull hurt, the bad kind that would sharpen later.   
  
“So now you know,” Casimir whispered, and turned to face the wall.   
  
Aurelio did not say anything, and he did not dismiss the spell. Underwater light rippled over them for the rest of the hour, until the spell guttered out at last.   
  
Neither of them slept for most of that night.   
  
*   
  
Nothing changed, but everything was different.   
  
Aurelio spoke to him as normal, but avoided eye contact. Casimir went quiet, and tried to give Aurelio as much space as possible, leaving the room early and coming back late. He made sure never to sit by Aurelio at meals, or in mass. Vanesa and César treated him exactly the same as before, so at least Aurelio hadn’t told them the truth. But Casimir couldn’t relax with them either, knowing that they thought he was something he wasn’t. Misunderstood, instead of barely holding back a monster’s instinct.   
  
“Dimelo que pasó,” Vanesa demanded, cornering him in the library. “Aurelio está molesto, y ha estado tranquilo como la tumba.”   
  
“No es nada de que preocuparse,” Casimir told her.   
  
“Mirarme a los ojos y decir que de nuevo,” Vanesa said.     
  
Casimir looked her dead in the eyes. “Vanesa,” he said quietly, the lie springing easily to his lips, “A menudo tengo problemas como estos. No rompo mis promesas.”   
  
Sudden comprehension flashed over Vanesa’s face. “Pobre Aurelio,” she said.   
  
“Si,” Casimir said. “Es repugnante.”   
  
Vanesa gave him a shocked look. “Qué?”   
  
“Le ayuda,” Casimir said, deliberately cruel. “Le ayuda a recordar sus promesas.”   
  
Vanesa didn’t bother replying, just left him--presumably to tell Aurelio that he was better off, and there was something wrong with Casimir after all.   
  
He actually was sick, later that day, just thinking about it.  

*  
  
The summons finally came from Rema, in the scarlet gloves of Cardinal Valentín. Bishop de Sepulveda promptly broke a bone in her foot, and revealed a regrettable penance which meant it could not be healed by magic.   
  
“That’s quite all right,” Cardinal Valentín said publicly, bestowing her famously beautiful smile on the bishop.  “I’ll wait for a few days, in case you change your mind.”   
  
Casimir knocked on Cardinal Valentín’s door that night, after supper. She answered the door herself, in a plain black robe, the braid in her hair unpinned from its net. Casimir stared fiercely at the floor as he apologized for coming without a summons, and tried not to notice that her feet were bare, the hem of her robe drifting against her toes.   
  
She heard his apology without comment, then gave him an amused look, smiling with just one corner of her mouth. “You don’t need an excuse to say hello, Casimir,” she said, her voice somehow even lower and richer than he remembered, and invited him inside.  
  
She poured him a glass of wine, just as if he were her equal, and pressed it into his hands. Her smallest finger brushed against his thumb, soft as a moth’s wing. “Now,” she said, gesturing him into a chair. “What did you come here to tell me?”   
  
She was the most beautiful woman in all the Remagna, according to the Duke of Firenze. She was unquestionably good, and kind, and wise. But more importantly, Cardinal Valentín knew who he was. She knew exactly what he was, and she still believed he could be of use to her, and to Elís.   
  
“If you call Bishop de Sepulveda a palanquin, Eminence,” Casimir told her haltingly, “it will tumble over the cliff, and she will not be in it. I don’t know if she’ll magic up an illusion, or if the person inside will be disguised as her, but she would rather fake her own death than kiss the Holy Mother’s ring, or be kept as a hostage in the city.”   
  
“Well,” Cardinal Valentín said. “That is very interesting. You’ve learned their tongue, I see.”   
  
He jerked his head in a nod, and took a sip of his wine. It tasted acidic, awful.   
  
“That was clever of you,” she said. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” she asked, her eyes spiritual and sympathetic.     
  
“There are Elísian sympathizers in the delegation, Eminence,” Casimir said. He swallowed hard. “And Aurelio de Arras is the Bishop’s son.”   
  
A slow, dazzling smile spread across her face. “Oh, Casimir,” she said. “You have done very well.”   


*   
  
“You told Vanesa that I liked you,” Aurelio said into the dark that night.   
  
“I thought it would be easier to explain,” Casimir said, after a minute. “She’ll give you more sympathy for being rejected by me than she would for being afraid of me.”   
  
Aurelio was quiet for a very long time, long enough that Casimir thought maybe he’d fallen asleep.   
  
“I’m afraid for you,” Aurelio said finally. He sounded sad, if anything. “I’m not afraid of you.”   
  
Casimir closed his eyes. “Maybe you should be,” he said.   
  
*   


Brother Luciano’s research into the immaculate resurrection of St. Claudia was complete, he announced jubilantly to the rest of St. Andrea. Copies of his manuscript would be sent to the capital, to the library in Venezia, and of course to Santa Dulcinea, as soon as it could be copied and illuminated.

The tongue of St. Claudia, of course, would be returned post-haste to the Basilica of La Médula de Diosa. The entire delegation walked down the mountain, Bishop de Sepulveda leaning on a cane. Everyone made it safely to the bottom, and eventually back to Gatolunya.   
  
Casimir learned later that Cardinal Perez renounced his former allies, the liberals in Spanalfheim; instead, he declared his support for Cardinal Valentín, much to the Pope’s displeasure.   
  
Casimir turned sixteen, or close enough to it, at midwinter. His cell--as small and crowded as it had always been--seemed cavernous at night. “Bien está lo que bien acaba,” Casimir whispered to himself in the vastness of that dark, and tried very hard to believe it.   


**Author's Note:**

> I live at wildehack.tumblr.com, and the punchworld lives at punchworld.tumblr.com.


End file.
